Author: Bhupendra Kumar Bhattacharyya
Publication: Organiser
Date: December 16, 2007
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=214&page=32
Introduction: A considerable number of Bangladeshi
Hindus took shelter in the North-eastern states of the country and West Bengal
immediately before March 25, 1971 and also subsequently. They have not been
granted citizenship and consequently have been subjected to harassment and
humiliation.
SHRI Rajnath Singh, President of Bharatiya
Janata Party recently stated that the Hindu migrants from Bangladesh should
be treated as refugees in this country. He is perfectly right as his statement
is based on the BJP's national policy of treating the persecuted Hindus of
Bangladesh who took shelter in this country as refugees and to treat the Bangladeshi
Muslims as infiltrators. But his pleading would not be of any help to the
Hindu refugees now in distress unless the government of India decides and
declares them as refugees.
The Hindus of East Bengal/East Pakistan/Bangladesh
were not a party to Mother India's vivisection in August 1947 and solom….
commitments were, therefore, made to them by Gandhijil, Pandit Nehru, Sardar
Patel and other national leaders to the effect that their future safety and
well-being would be taken care of by the government of India. The East Bengal
Hindus believed and reposed their unflinching trust on these leaders but have
been let down by their successors and the accursed Hindus have thus been abandoned
to their cursed fate in Bangladesh. The people of this country have also forgotten
them totally although they were of us till the other day.
A considerable number of Bangladesh Hindus
took shelter in the North-eastern states of the country and West Bengal immediately
before March 25, 1971 and also subsequently. They have not been granted citizenship
and consequently have been subjected to harassment and humiliation and the
spectre of deportation looms large on them. In fact many of them have been
deported and "thrown to the wolves". It is a reversal of the sacred
pledge made to these Hindus by the national leaders and tantamount to a great
and gross betrayal to them.
The government of India has stopped issue
of citizenship certificates to the Hindu refugees from Bangladesh. At the
same time it has granted citizenship to the "Pakistan nationals of minority
Hindus community displaced consequent to the wars between India and Pakistan
in the years 1965 and 1971" and also to the "minority Hindus with
Pakistan citizenship who have migrated to India more than five years back
with the intention of permanently settling down in India" under the Citizenship
(Amendment) Rules , 2004 as contained in the government of India's Notification
No.G.S.R. 168(E) dated February 28, 2004. In this connection I also quote
below a report dated January 3, 2006 from The Statesman, Calcutta: "Ninety-seven
displaced Pakistanis living in Rajasthan for decades have been given Indian
citizenship".
The creation of Bangladesh does not end the
agony of the Hindus there. During the Begun Khaleda Zia regime (2001-2006),
Hindus and other religious minorities were subjected to unprecedented brutalities
such as rape, loot, arson and murder. According to some prominent Muslim intellectuals
of Bangladesh, the brutalities on the Hindus and other minorities even surpassed
those of the atrocities perpetrated by the Pakistan army on the people during
the liberation war in Bangladesh in 1971.
It may be specifically mention here that the
Parliament devoted 3 full days from 7th to 9th August 1950 and debated the
deplorable conditions of the Hindus in East Pakistan. Alas all these are now
the things of the past.
Abul Barkat, Professor of Economics, Dhaka
University and General Secretary, Bangladesh Economic Council told a seminar
in Dhaka sometime ago that landed properties measuring 2.2 million acres valued
at approximately Taka 2,52,000 crores belonging to the Hindus of Bangladesh
have been grabbed under the Enemy Property Act. 1965 and the Vested Property
Act, 1974 by the Bangladesh government. The grabbers of the land are the leading
members of all the major political parties of Bangladesh including Awami League.
Prof Barkat has further revealed that the grabbed properties also included
the ancestral home and landed property of Surya Sen (1894-1934)-the here of
the Chittagong Armoury Raid (April 18, 1930). The raid was the most daring
act of the revolutionaries during the country's freedom struggle. Surya Sen
was hanged in Chittagong Jail February 12, 1934. Had not our country been
Partitioned, Surya Sen's home would have been a centre of national pilgrimage
for the people of this country. As usual, the government of India's stoic
silence in such matters has emboldened the Bangladesh government to continue
its Hindu land-grabbing spree.
The Hindu population in East Pakistan was
11.4 million or 30 per cent of its total population at the time of the Partition
of India. Over the last 60 years it has declined alarmingly and has come down
to 12 per cent according to the 2001 census in Bangladesh. The Hindu population,
however, should have been 44.4 million in Bangladesh in 2001 as per the normal
annual growth rate of 2.5 per cent against 15.6 million as revealed in the
2001 census. Many believed that the Hindu population had further dwindled
during the Khaleda Zia regime of 5 years and it now accounts for a more 10
per cent. During the last 60 years the government of India has lamentably
failed to stop the influx of Hindus and other religious minorities owing to
its continued policy of appeasement, vacillation, inertia and inaction towards
Bangladesh.
Another aghast part of the daily life of the
Hindus is that they have been living under compulsion in the midst of certain
heinous crimes committed an them almost daily as a routine affair in Bangladesh.
These are: Defilement of their temples in one place, abduction of their girls
in another place of places and grabbing of their properties in some other
places of Bangladesh. The Hindus seldom get any justice in most of these cases.
Most of our politicians, secular intellectuals, vote-begging secularists and
media seldom raise and discuss the agency and anxiety, joy and sorrow, weal
and woe, troubles and tribulations, problems and prospects, safety and security
of the Hindus of Bangladesh although they contributed significantly towards
the country's intellectual progress and advanced the advent of freedom through
their sustained struggle-particularly the revolutionary movement starting
with Khudiram Bose-the first martyr of the last century (he was hanged on
August 11, 1908) and ending with Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and his INA's
(Indian National Army) war of independence during 1943-1945 against the British
Raj.
Through this article I would humbly urge Rajnathji
to consider selecting same of his party MPs for raising a threadbare discussion
in the Parliament on the Bangladesh Hindus and other religious minorities
on the two points mentioned below:
(1) Suo-motu granting of citizenship to the
Hindu refugees and other minorities who took shelter immediately before March
25, 1971 and those who came subsequently and (2) to toll the Bangladesh government
in the language it understands to behave like a civilized country and not
as a lair to discharge its obligations to its minorities so that they can
live in their ancestral homes in Bangladesh" Where the mind is without
fear and the head is held high".
(The author can be contacted at 30, Jagabandhu
Path, Housing Road, Hengrabari, Guwahati-781 006.)
